Modern Library Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century (42)

George Orwell went to Spain in late 1936, in his role as a journalist,
but then, pretty inevitably, put down his pen and spent the next year fighting
with the P.O.U.M (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista) Militia against
the Fascist forces under Francisco Franco. Homage to Catalonia,
written immediately after his return and published in 1938, tells the story
of his military service with the POUM, both against the Right and the Left,
and, in quick succession, of his initial hopes for the classless society
that he thought he had found on first arrival, then of his disappointment
with the level of disorganization of the Leftist forces and finally of
his disillusionment when pro-Stalinist "allies" began attacking Socialists
and Anarchists who refused to toe the Soviet line. Orwell, who by
then had nearly been killed when shot through the neck in battle, and his
wife were ultimately forced to flee from Spain, to avoid Stalinist security
forces, which had labeled him pro-fascist.

The one thing, more than any other, that makes Orwell one of the great
literary and cultural figures of the 20th Century, is that it was this
last fact that truly galled him. Orwell was committed to the idea
of revolutionary Socialism. As he says when the security forces attack
POUM:

I have no particular love for the idealized 'worker'
as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's
mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker
in conflict with his natural enemy, the
policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side
I am on.

He was fueled by an animus towards the class system which is almost
incomprehensible to us Americans, but which came naturally to young British
intellectuals, particularly in the wake of the First World War. Accordingly,
he was not unsympathetic to the Soviet decision that they had to take over
the Left in Spain; in his revolutionary heart, he could understand that
such a maneuver, however brutal might eventually serve the greater cause
of the Workers. No, what he could not tolerate was that the perpetrators
and their fellow travelers in the Press lied about it. It is the
essence of the man that being purged was tolerable, but having his political
beliefs portrayed incorrectly was intolerable.

Orwell's concern for honest language is easy to discern in 1984
(see Orrin's review) and Animal Farm
(see Orrin's review) once you know
to look for it, but it is first evident here. He recognized early
on that one of the ways in which dictators would attack freedom was to
degrade the language and by cheapening the meaning of words, deaden the
emotional reaction of the citizenry to events. Prescient in so many
ways, Orwell was never more correct than when he made this connection between
the integrity of language and the integrity of the men using it.
One can only imagine a profile of Bill Clinton as written by Orwell.

The Spanish Civil War is second only to the Hitler/Stalin pact as a
dividing line between mere Left-Wingers and genuine Communists. It
was here that the true nature of the Soviet Union first intruded itself
upon the public consciousness to such a degree that its defenders truly
had to be considered apologists, not simply naive do-gooders. Orwell,
objective and honest as always, wrote only about what he saw, so his portrayal
of events is necessarily incomplete and, writing while the conflict was
still going on, he was not able to form the really harsh judgments that
our historical perspective allows us to make. But it is to his great
good credit that he wrote what he did and when he did. Many of his
brethren on the Left refused to do so for fear of hurting "the cause".
Orwell chose to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may; for
that alone he should be celebrated.

SPANISH CIVIL WAR:
-EXCHANGE:
"FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS: THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR" Guests: CHRISTOPHER
HITCHENS - Professor of Liberal Studies, New School for Social Research;
Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair and The Nation and RONALD RADOSH
- Senior Research Associate, Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies,
George Washington University; Co-author, Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union
and the Spanish Civil War (Hoover Institute)
-REVIEW:
FRANCO A Biography By Paul Preston (Paul Johnson, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: A Seemingly Ordinary Man, NY Review of Books
Franco by Paul Preston
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: How Franco Made It, NY Review of Books
The Franco Regime: 1936-1975
by Stanley G. Payne
-REVIEW:
Bernard Knox: The Spanish Tragedy, NY Review of Books
The Spanish Civil War by
Hugh Thomas
The Spanish Civil War: A
History in Pictures introduction by Raymond Carr
Spanish Front: Writers on
the Civil War edited by Valentine Cunningham
Voices Against Tyranny:
Writing of the Spanish Civil War
The Signal Was Spain: The
Spanish Aid Movement in Britain, 1936-39 by Jim Fyrth
Prisoners of the Good Fight:
The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 by Carl Geiser
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: The Red and the White, NY Review of Books
Blood of Spain: An Oral
History of the Spanish Civil War by Ronald Fraser
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: The Spanish Tragedy, NY Review of Books
The Spanish Republic and
the Civil War 1931-1939 by Gabriel Jackson
Journey to the Alcarria
by Camilo José Cela and translated by Frances M. López Morillas
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: Homage from Catalonia, NY Review of Books
Visionaries: The Spanish
Republic and the Reign of Christ by William A. Christian, Jr.
-REVIEW:
Robert O. Paxton: The Uses of Fascism, NY Review of Books
Fascism: Past, Present,
Future by Walter Laqueur
A History of Fascism, 1914-1945
by Stanley G. Payne
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: The New New Spanish History, NY Review of Books
Fascism from Above: The
Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, by Shlomo Ben-Ami
Revolution and War in Spain,
1931-1939 edited by Paul Preston
La Encrucijada Vasca by
Ricardo García Damborenea
-REVIEW:
Bernard Knox: In Another Country, NY Review of Books
Fallen Sparrows: The International
Brigades in the Spanish Civil War by Michael Jackson
The Odyssey of the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade by Peter N. Carroll
Prisoners of the Good Fight:
The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1938 by Carl Geiser
Remembering Spain: Hemingway's
Civil War Eulogy and the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade edited by Cary Nelson
Another Hill: An Autobiographical
Novel by Milton Wolff
-REVIEW:
Bernard Knox: Remembering Madrid, NY Review of Books
Miracle of November: Madrid's
Epic Stand, 1936 by Dan Kurzman
The Spanish Revolution by
Burnett Bolloten
Beyond Death and Exile:
The Spanish Republicans in France, 1939-1955 by Louis Stein
-REVIEW:
Stephen Spender: Writers and Revolutionaries: The Spanish War, NY Review
of Books
The Last Great Cause by
Stanley Weintraub
Today the Struggle by Katharine
Bail Hoskins
Between the Bullet and the
Lie by Carl Eby
The Fifth Column and four
unpublished stories of the Spanish Civil War by Ernest Hemingway
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: Allá vá! Ra! Ra! Ra!, NY Review of Books
Iberia by James Michener
Spanish Scene by Chandler
Brossard
Franco by Brian Crozier
Franco by George Hills
-REVIEW:
Raymond Carr: The Spanish Tragedy, NY Review of Books
Spain, the Gentle Anarchy
by Benjamin Welles
The Siege of the Alcazar
by Cecil D. Eby